EMDG grants for IP expenses

Clients should be aware of a grant available for trade mark and patent expenses.

Australian businesses who export overseas may be eligible for a grant which would help them recover up to $25,000 of costs for filing for protection of their IP rights overseas.

The Export Market Development Grant Program (EMDG) is a Federal Government program designed to assist Australian exporters to expand into overseas markets. The program has been running for 40 years, but a more recent development has been the inclusion of an IP registration (and related insurance) expense category.

The EMDG program has expanded to support export focus commercialisation efforts of Australian based IP developers and owners of IP. Accessing this program allows businesses to recover some of their overseas filing costs. Overseas promotional efforts covered by the scheme could include activities such as contacting potential users of the IP and conducting demonstrations at overseas trade shows.

Businesses can claim payments that are attributable to the grant, registration or extension of the term or period of the registration of the intellectual property (for countries other than Australia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) or New Zealand or other than Iran up to and including 17 January 2016). These would include foreign attorney fees. A claim can also be made for expenses such as insurance premiums paid for protection against possible infringement, in countries outside Australia, of eligible intellectual property.

The EMDG program has certain eligibility requirements which include that the business must have an Australian business number, it must have incurred at least $15,000 in eligible expenditure and must not have an income exceeding $50 million annually.

Claims for intellectual property registration can be of up to $50,000 per application.

Applications for the 2017-2018 grant close on 30 November 2018. An extended lodgement period applies from the beginning of December to the end of February, but only can be lodged using a Quality Incentive Program (QIP) consultant.

Please let us know if we can assist you in accessing this program.

This article was written by Jennifer Huby, Partner, Dunja Poljak, Special Counsel and Trade Mark Attorney.